--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Rob" <magwich78@...> wrote:
> Is the genitive *dem-s reconstructed solely on the basis of Gk.
> despóte:s, or is there other evidence?
The gen. form is seen in Avestan d&:n.g paitis^ and Vedic pátir dán,
both reflecting IIr. */dans pati-s./ or the reverse. The short vowel
is safe for the Indic form, but only Greek shows it was an /e/.
Still, that is generally the way reconstruction works, so it seems
to be *déms and very definitely is *dVNs (with a short vowel
followed by a nasal consonant).
> It seems that the 'house' root is tricky indeed. How do you
explain
> the contrast between e- and o-vocalism?
It has become a classic in the literature on acrostatic paradigms
and rootnouns alike. The doctrine says that acrostatic paradigms
have é in their weak forms, as 3sg middle Ved. stáve 'is invoked' as
opposed to a long vowel in strong forms, as 3sg act.
stáuti 'invokes'. This is "Narten ablaut", and there are nouns doing
the same, as Gk. hêpar, Avest. ya:kar& vs. Skt. yákr.t, yaknás, Lat.
jecur 'liver', said to reflect *yé:kW-r(t), *yekW-n- (originally,
the story goes, gen. *yékW-n.-s, then *yekW-n-ós by normalization).
Some nouns, however, show /o/ instead of /é:/ in the strong forms.
The nominative to go with *dem-s definitely has an o-vowel, cf. Arm.
nom.-acc.sg. tun, and 'night' has *nókWt- all over except in Hitt.
nekuz which is diagnozed as a genitive, this leading to *nókWt-s,
gen. *nékWt-s, and the model of which one may also take the
alternant of 'foot' to have been originally distributed as *pó:d-s,
gen. *péd-s (-> normalized gen. *ped-ós).
I believe we can get all of this regular by positing underlying root-
vowel length in the acrostatic paradigms. The 3sg act. *sté:w-ti
needs no further explanation if the stem was *sté:w- all along. It
weak variant *stéw- may then be a reduction of *pretonic* *ste:w-´
not unlike the process that led to zero-grade with short-vowel
roots. There is the difficulty, of course, that the accent is not on
the ending, but I assume it once was. That assumption, i.e. a
prestage such as gen. *pe:d-ós, offers a reason for the shortening
of the root vowel, and I do not think it is as bold as it might
look. For, when the reduction of unaccented vowels has changed *pe:d-
ós to *ped-ós, it has changed structures with short vowels into
monosyllables, as gen. *H2ner-ós (*H2ner- 'man', Gk. ané:r) > PIE
*H2n.r-ós. At that stage words of normal structure had become
phonological monosyllables with only one full vowel.
The "acrostatic" type however had only shortened its long pretonic
vowel to a short pretonic vowel. Now we need a rule that puts the
accents right. I think it's free of charge: pretonic vowels are
accented. That is the same as saying initial accent, accent on the
first full vowel of every word. Since all pretonic short vowels have
been lost, there remain only the reduced products of originally long
vowels to operate on, so if "initial accent" is introduced, we get
the accent right. That gives us *péd-os. One might like to leave it
at that, given the Greek and Sanskrit genitive podós, padás, but the
existence of genitives like *dem-s, *nékWt-s, *gWéw-s (or *gWów-s),
and 3pl forms like Ved. táks.ati, s'á:sati reflecting *-nti without
the vowel of the desinence /-ent/ show that the desinential segments
were subsequently reduced. So we have to assume just that: the stage
*péd-os was reduced to *péd-s, which is the structure seen in some
archaic forms, while others adjusted the form to the normal type
with accented endings, so that *ped-ós is in all probability the
correct PIE reconstruction for this particular lexeme.
The strong paradigm forms should then be based on structures with a
long vowel in the root segment. But we often find an o-vowel, as
in 'house', 'foot' and 'night'. There are no verbs of this kind, so
it looks like a thing that could arise only in nouns. There are no
neuter root-nouns like this either (not many of any other kind,
however, I practically know only 'heart', but that's a footnote), so
I would suggest that the o-timbre has been caused by the nominative
lengthening. If we expect the product of *pé:d-s in the nominative
and find *pó:d-s, is it then not the most sensible thing to ask if
*pó:d-s could be the product of *pe:d-s (*pé:d-z if we need a
special sibilant)? I guess it is, and the necessary assumption is
quite easy: *pé:d-s underwent lengthening, and the additional length
in the already-long vowel caused it to assume o-timbre.
[Have to run, must post this, lest it disappears. I'll be back.]
Jens